tbuskey writes "My users have gigabytes of data that they never touch and we're constantly near the limit on disk space on a terabyte file server. We've tried to ask them to remove data, archive things to DVDs, etc. Their projects and managers never provide the cleanup time. We have things checked out in revision control systems years ago that were never checked back in. All & all, it's a typical engineering IT shop. Lots of Solaris and Linux with Windows filesystems too.
I've looked at a tool called FS_scan (http://clusterbuffer.wetpaint.com/page/File+System+Scan) that gives lots of data about files in a CSV format. That's only part of the puzzle of course.
I've worked at places that move files older then a year to tape. So the users run scripts to change the timestamp and they never get archived. Usually IT doesn't know what data is needed/not needed and can't arbitrarily set an expire date. I've seen places that use a disk hogs email. Without management support, users can ignore them.
Users see 1 TB drives for $100 and say disk is cheap, but someone has to buy them. Then they need a computer to plug them into. USB drives are slow, not designed for multiuser access and they're fragile.
I'd like to find a tool that finds "old" files and encourages the user to do something with it. I've thought about moving directory structures into a tier of folders and out of the main folders. Or emailing whoever owns a chunk of files periodically. Ideally I want something that gets users to deal with useless data without involving IT, new purchases or management dictum. I can dream :-)
What do other IT shops do?"
